Corn Supplies/Cereal Prices

It's going to worsen, as the morning paper made note of ethanol only corn/grain stocks to be grown in fields this season.

Before this turns into a bash ethanol and the corn grower thing, take a look at this document and ask yourself one question...who is really making the money off of groceries.

Everyone notice how last time, 08 ,when corn hit alltime highs how the prices went up and the packaging got smaller, when commodity prices dropped that fall grocery prices stayed the same. The United States still has and always will have the cheapest and most abundant food supply in the world. We plan planting our normal 50/50 corn/ sb rotation with 160 acres second year corn., Mike

I'm not bashing ethanol, even as I should but it is raising the value of corn with other grains making the farm a little better for feeding our own families.

AaronSEIA wrote: Before this turns into a bash ethanol and the corn grower thing, take a look at this document and ask yourself one question...who is really making the money off of groceries. AaronSEIA

Could you provide the link to the above graphic, please.  I want to be able to post it on another forum as soon as someone bashes farmers or ethanol.

Not a big fan of ethanol for what it does when it sits in a engine or gas tank for a while.With oil consumption going up in China and India ethanol is our only way to try and reduce that.Corn is probably easiest to convert to ethanol mainly because we grow so much.My hope is that we can start using other sources to make it out of.Brazil and Argentina make a tremendous amount of ethanol out of sugar beets.Switchgrass has shown some promise. Lets use corn for now with the hope we can convert to another source in the future.Have read alot of research is going into producing ethanol from seaweed? in the sea.
The long and short of it is we need to come up with another energy source that we can produce here.Nothing would make me happier than if the Middle east never gets another cent from us.Nobody would give a rats ass about that area and we could stop going over there to "stabilize" things
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Edited by Pat the Plumber CIL - 12 Feb 2011 at 9:16am

Ethanol is a loser.It has to be subsidised to get produced.

And add coal into this equation and it does not get any better.

AND "OIL" ISNT SUBSIDIZED???  COME ON THINK ABOUT IT!!!!!!    what are you going to use for fuel when world supply of oil is depleted. Tree Huggers and Ethanol Bashers will Be SOL

Can you eat ethanol since corn won't be available for food consumption at anything near a reasonable price when oil runs out? Ethanol from corn virtually has to be an alternative whose existence is mostly due to those who want to line their pockets at the publics expense. Ethanol from corn is a very poor alternative energy source. I used stupid to describe it earlier because I truly believe that is the best description there is.

There is a cane sugar plant on Kauai, Hawaii that is now making ethanol, most of which is used on the islands.  The sugar market in Hawaii isn't real good as labor is high, mostly because of the cost of living there, and shipping is expensive to the mainland.  All the remaining sugar plants in Hawaii burn the waste material to make heat for the sugar process and electricity which is tied to the grid. 
The bottom line for all energy is that it is going to get more expensive, subsidies or not, the cost for hydro, wind and solar should go up less then extracted forms, such as coal and oil.  Even the nuclear proponents admit that nuke power will never be affordable without government support.  Also, as with coal, nukes use a tremendous amount of water for cooling.  In the west, water is subsidized by the government, local, state and fed. Solar and wind doesn't need much water.  The cheapest way is through conservation.


Edited by JohnCO - 12 Feb 2011 at 1:51pm

But that ethanol special engine could make better use of the fuel by running a higher compression ratio to get more efficiency than it can ever get with gasoline.

As for less than a buck of grain in a box of cereal, think again. At $6 a bushel (which I didn't get for my 2010 crop because I sold it all LAST YEAR) and 56 pounds to the bushel a pound of corn costs 10.7 cents and its a sure bet the cereal companies locked up futures contracts at $4.75 a bushel or better last year. In the large size 16 ounce cereal package there could be more like 8 cents worth of corn. Yet it retails for $4 or more. We farmers aren't getting rich from retail cereals, but we are doing better than break even or loosing at these prices. But there's another factor, land rents, fertilizer costs, seed costs, FUEL costs, and herbicide costs have all risen right along with the market price to keep the return poorer in farming which can take a couple million buck investment in land and equipment than stocks and bonds or CDs at the bank. A 3% return on a couple million investment isn't good but its better than a net loss that has been the norm.

Gerald J.

Last week corn over $7.00 soybeans over $14.00  do you think the government will admit we may have a little inflation now? 

Gordy wrote: Last week corn over $7.00 soybeans over $14.00  do you think the government will admit we may have a little inflation now?

wind, solar, and ethanol dont stand on their own. Way to expensive... tell me how we subsidise coal and nuke ???  AS far as i know the govt passes endless stupid rules trying to condemn both. If they would keep their regulatory nose out of it, the cost of power would only increase with the cost of living and be very reasonable.  The EPA among others, is killing us.